Upon the Latest Shooting in America
People kill with guns they’ve stolen. People kill with guns they legally bought at a show with no background check. People kill with their parent’s legally purchased gun. People kill with guns after they went through a background check. People kill with guns given to them as presents. People kill with guns they’ve modified to shoot more and faster. People kill with guns using illegally large ammo clips. People kill with guns whether they are mentally ill or not, whether they have predetermined targets or not, whether they are familiar with the terrain or not, whether they have planned it for years or are shooting out of a temporary rage of emotion. People kill mothers with guns, they kill children in school, they kill elected officials, they kill people attending the movies, they kill people they believe have slighted them, they kill their classmates and their former workmates and they kill old women in their church basement. We pretend that policy can’t save us, but the truth is that policy has saved lives in other countries, and it would here, too.
There is no one safe from the muzzle of a gun in America, there is no good time to talk about the dead, because as soon as the NRA holds its mourning period for one shooting, another is just beginning. There are fifty-two weeks in a year on Earth, and we have just hosted our forty-fifth mass school shooting of 2015 (and 294th if you count all shootings involving four or more people). Please. If you want to see gun control, call your Congressperson today. And tomorrow. And Monday. Call them more than once. Call your Senators, both of them. Tell them: enough.
Here’s how to call your representative: http://www.house.gov/representatives/
Here’s how to call your senators: http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/
Remember, to own a dog you have to register the animal, telling the public health department where the dog resides, and ensuring you give your pet an annual rabies vaccination (there are no personal belief exemptions with this one). When we think about cars, which also account for more than 30,000 deaths a year in the US, we have collectively taken steps to reduce those deaths:
- We regulate how cars are built, especially regarding safety design (seat belts, crash cages, placement of the gas tank, etc.)
- We regulate how cars are driven (speed limits, road curve design, right of way laws, traffic lights, etc.)
- We regulate how cars are maintained (inspection stations, emissions rules)
- We regulate liability and insurance in case of an accident
- We regulate who can drive cars (vision exams, age limits, license point systems, etc.)
- We register every car to an owner and an address. The DMV databases are commonly used in police investigations and by crediting agencies.
And consider that deaths are something that sometimes happens with vehicle use. Killing is not the primary purpose of a car. Killing is the primary purpose of a gun. Do guns seem over-regulated with regard to other human activity that the government is compelled to oversee? Your answer should be “no.” Guns are not regulated as much as driving is, or educating our children is, or how our food is grown, or how our health care system is managed/delivered, or how our corporations’s finances are managed. All of these regulations are put in place in order to minimize harm to people and the world we live in, but for some reason the NRA would have us believe that regulating guns—and only guns—is a danger to America itself.
I dream of a day when we don’t buy that lie anymore. Please, give your elected officials a call and tell them to stand up to the NRA.
Honestly, I have a lot of other things to get to this week, and within that, a lot of other pieces to write. But I have been so ubiquitously harassed by national-level Democrats that hey, I’ll take some time out this afternoon to respond to their litany of email.
It’s the beginning of the end for the NFL as we know it—Between the increasing evidence that even high school football causes irreversible brain injuries, that 
Getting older brings with it some other unfortunate awkwardness, however. I make cultural references that people under 30 don’t understand. And for me these pop culture mini-Litmus tests are even more out of date than my age would suggest they’d be, because my father was 41 years old when I was born, so he harkened back to the freaking swing era. I can make a Hoagie Carmichael mention and not even have the 50-year-olds in the room know what I’m talking about.
When I get a little afraid to admit just how many hours I’ve spent watching cop shows and courtroom dramas, I just add up all the hours spent reading, which is impossible, I suppose, and then I feel better. Because even loving popular culture the way I do, I still worry that what my elementary school teachers told me is true: TV will rot my brain.
Last week, a brouhaha erupted on the Internet after Daniel Tosh, a lackluster comic and host of Tosh.0 on Comedy Central made a joke about rape. Or rather, he attempted such a joke, knowing full well that somebody out there in the world, if not his audience, would find it unfunny and offensive. 
I’ve been fascinated by the concept of the humanoid robot, or android, as long as I’ve been reading science fiction, and fortunately there are loads of examples out there for people who find themselves fascinated by such things. Although at first it may seem like androids make a simple statement about our humanity—or lack thereof—I think there are different ways that androids play into a commentary on our species. And in terms of narrative, they’re characters, sometimes even the protagonist, they’ve been used as themes, reflections, and on occasion are the plot itself. So with a fondness for the non-carbon community, let’s look at some messages in popular culture that come from how androids have been conceptualized. 
I couldn’t bring myself to title this post “Everything I Know I Learned from My Sex Change,” because I’m not a fan of Jackson Browne, but it is true that I’ve gleaned some stellar lessons through the gender transition experience, many of them “scalable” to life more generally. Here are but a few of those pointers.
I do love a good police procedural. I got hooked on them somewhere around Hill Street Blues which uncoincidentally is about the same time I became addicted to hospital shows (thank you, St. Elsewhere). These were character-driven, with short arcs of crime stories interspersed with longer relationship arcs of the ensemble characters, and the latter knew to never really upstage the former. Yes, we knew all about Jessica Fletcher’s life, but we really were invested in her solving another murder. Priorities, people.
Trans/plant/portation 